Along the Black River in North Carolina, bald cypress trees have been quietly growing for millennia. Quite literally so: Scientists recently found trees over 2,000 years old - including one that is at least 2,624 years old.

That makes it the fifth-oldest known non-clonal tree in the world. (Utah's Pando, an ancient quaking aspen forest, reproduces asexually, by cloning itself from an 80,000-year-old root system.)

Another nearby tree was found to be 2,088 years old - and geoscientists believe that more bald cypresses (Taxodium distichum) in the Three Sisters Swamp could be the same age or even older.